Ernest Hemingway - An American Contemporary
...writer of short stories, and winner of the 1954 Nobel Prize for literature. He created a distinguished body of prose fiction, much of it based on adventurous life. He was born on July 21, 1899, the second of six children, in Oak Park, Ill., in a house built by his widowed grandfather, Ernest Hall. Oak Park was a Protestant, upper middle class suburb of Chicago. He died on July 2, 1961.
Early Years
Hemingway stated in Green Hills of Africa that civil war is the best war for a writer. Both of his grandfathers fought in the Civil War and the family was proud of its military traditions. The Hemingway children were brought up on heroic tales of the Civil War. Ernest was also fascinated by the wars and heroes at the turn of the century: the Spanish-American War (1898);, the Goer War (1899-1902); and the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), which inspired him to collect military cartoons. Ernest loved to read the Old Testament when he was a boy because it was so full of battles. (Meyers 3)
Ernest Hemingway's maternal grandfather was Ernest Hall, who was injured in the Civil War. He tried to shoot himself when he was near death, but Hemingway's father had removed the bullets from his gun. Ernest was six years old at the time, and thought his father shouldn't have prevented his grandfather from committing suicide.
His paternal grandfather was Anson Hemingway. He was a formal, serious, and deeply religious man who was active in the temperance movement. He established a prosperous real-estate business. Both families were prosperous.
Hemingway's parents were Clarence Edmonds "Ed" Hemingway and Grace Hall. They had a fairly happy marriage although they were very different. Grace was the dominant one in the marriage.
Hemingway was an active, imaginative, and fearless youngster. He said at an early age that he wasn't afraid of anything. He was...
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